Are There Really Any Admins Ever Going In The Servers?

[Skaruts 14]

Hello, I usualy play in the 2fort server, been going there for maybe 3+ years (on and off as I play TF2), and very rarely I've seen cheaters in there. But as of the F2P update I've seen a few. But lately it's almost every day.

The last 3 days straight I found an aimbotter there during the night (at a time when less players were there). I'm not new to gaming, I've seen numerous and different cheats in action, I know how to detect them if they aren't blatant - but these were all pretty blatant.

Votebaning doesn't work, as it only takes one person that doesn't understand any of it and the cheater himself to vote against to make it fail. Furthermore, some of them have an automatic name changing system that prevents votes from working at all, and makes it dangerous because they usualy use current player's names, leading votebans to possibly ban legitimate players if they go on with it.

It would be great if there were some admins going in there now and then, at the very least, because players alone have no means of getting rid of these guys.

On a related note, the cheaters might have been the same person everyday, only with different steam accounts. An IP ban would be more adequate if that would be the case, and this is not something players can do by themselves.

Yesterday he was there with the name "Hit man", then changed the name to TLB (if I recall correctly). I retrieved his steam ID but I forgot to store it... But I know it ended with 500. Hope it helps anyway.

Thanks.

[DrkEagle 15]

Record demos of it happening and then make sure you type "status" in the console when you do. Then post in the bans section. You need to present your case with proof rather than posting about it. If it happens to be more people on the same IP using multiple accounts that you posted and were banned, I'm sure they will move further with a IP ban. But without any proof and demos and accounts, they can't track the accounts on the stats to see their IPs to tell if it's coming from the same person.

[Bombz 31]

The ban list includes client id's now. (This is the number after the players name) like DrkEagle (300). Issue a status command in the console, look for the duplicate name and find the one that has an additional character added to it, this is the guy you want to ban. Find the correct number (###) in the ban list and ban it. Ignore the names. Tell everyone via chat to ban (###).

[Skaruts 14]

I'm surely not going to make a report everyday. My main concern in this topic is that there seems to be no control over the server, and that's why I'm posting it here and not in the bans section. Another cheater has been in there just 5 minutes ago from the time I'm writing this (you can check the chat logs). It seems to be a daily habit now. And why not, the game is free, they can use and abuse their stuff without risks. But they surely won't pick servers that have admins frequently keeping an eye on them - I'm sure they won't go through the trouble of creating new accounts every so often, unless they have a bot for that.

I realize you have a lot of servers to deal with, and having been an admin before I have quite a clear idea of how it is, but this is becoming systematic and annoying, and may require a bit more of attention.

And like I said, posting demos with steamIDs is not going to do much if this is a multi steam account case. Unless of course if the client ID is useful in that regard (which I'm honestly unaware of, since I never used it).

[Bombz 31]

Yeah Skartus I see your point. Banning someone who is blatantly hacking after the fact via ban reports isn't much of a solution. In 10 minutes it takes to properly construct a ban thread, said user could have created a whole new F2P account and already be back.

But to be honest I've grown to appreciate that they don't administrate their servers heavily. My god some of the other servers I've played on in the past (No heroes) were fucking terrible. Over zealous admins with the ban trigger who would ban you over the simplest of things. Not to mention all the overhead that comes with it, ban requests because this guy said the N word, ban requests because this guy said this. Ban requests because this teleporter wasn't in as effective of a location as I think it should be. Ban requests because this medic is following me around healing me (lol). Lotus pretty much just let the communities and the server communities within govern what is acceptable for said server, and I really really like that, because all small server communities within a bigger community kind of develop and have their own little intricate ways.

So I know this was kinda OT but I just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in to why they probably don't need or have lots of admins, and I've asked for them in the past myself, but I've grown to accept that it's actually a good thing.

What I would like to see though, are some changes to voteban percentages and durations. I'm not sure if Mana ever modified those numbers when there was a thread about it a few months ago, but here's a suggestion for it again if not.

[Gotcha 6,307]

We have a four different 2Fort servers. Maybe you should start by naming the one you are talking about before writing down such a long report.

[Skaruts 14]

I agree with you Bombz, in practicaly everything. It's one of the reasons why I like Lotus servers is the "freedom" factor, and yea I know the NoHeroes servers... meh... I blacklisted the only one I played in as soon as I've been in there for an hour. Then I took it off from blacklist just for the sole reason that there's no cp_warpath in europe. :\

Though, my idea of more control over servers leaves abusive admins apart in their little world of stupidity and delusions of grandeur, away from my field of consideration, and relies more on stealthy admins that really only care for things that are really worth losing time doing something about. When I was admin in some HL2dm servers I sometimes went in with different random names and play around a few matches. We, somewhat, heavily admined some of the servers, but we did so little kicking and banning that some people sometimes thought there were no admins. We were more concerned with cheaters and extreme cases of exploiting, and such, and those were usualy banned from the server console, or some other external means.

(This was our way to start having less kick/ban requests, we were not experienced at the time, but we quickly learned a few lessons. Like you say they get quite annoying, especialy because 99.99% of them are not at all necessary... )

I think you may be right about changing vote percentages and durations. That might solve one side of the issue a bit, hopefully without granting too much power to the people.

We have a four different 2Fort servers. Maybe you should start by naming the one you are talking about before writing down such a long report.

I didn't know that. I'll check which one it is. Only know it's in UK.

EDIT: Actualy I found 9 Lotus Clan 24/7 2fort servers. It seems you differ them by their location, so it's the United Kingdom one, as I had just said.